Winona! Dun-dun-dun!Never mind. Moving right along I often wonder what sorts of elcseciastical politics are involved in getting a church named a basilica. In my own diocese we have a few of them, one which unquestionably deserves the distinction and one which couldn't possibly have merited such an honor on its own merit. There's at least one more, but I've never seen it (and I think the diocese just closed it down, in any case). The church that really deserves the style is actually basilican in form. It is a magnificent baroque edifice, glorious inside and out, and crowned with an enormous dome that looms over the south of the city the way the Capitol dome looms over SE Washington DC. This church was built by a renowned and saintly priest whose cause for canonization is under way at Rome (he is currently venerable). The place looks like something the Pope would have as his home away from Rome. It is all marble and gilt and cherubs and columns and frescoed ceilings to such an extent as to utterly overwhelm. It is wholly worthy of the style basilica and was so named by Pope Pius XI in 192?.There is another church in this diocese, however, that was named a basilica by Pope Paul VI. This particular church is small, circular, and absurd looking. If anyone is old enough to remember those Nescafe mugs from the 70s: those glass coffee cups with latitude and longitude lines etched on them like half a globe? If you remember those, turn one upside down and imagine it the size of a larger Thruway/Interstate rest stop. That's exactly what this church looks like: a glass coffee cup turned upside down. The interior ugh don't even get me started. If you can imagine the ugliest 60s era theatre-in-the-round church you've ever seen and then imagine that somebody had vandalized it, you'll have an idea of what this place looks like. And it's small! There is nothing grand or noble or distinctive about this building. Nothing! And yet it has the nerve to call itself a basilica.There is no way a Pope, not even Paul VI, would examine photos of such an utterly unworthy little structure and honor it by calling it what it so obviously and manifestly could never authentically be. So I'm guessing there have to be politics involved when a church is presented with that ennobling red and yellow umbrella.